`Chants Mystiques,” Sunday’s special program at Symphony Center, was a rare combination: a phenomenal solo voice, a fine choir under an expert director, and music that ranges over 3,000 years and a large part of the world.
The singers were cantor Alberto Mizrahi, of Anshe Emet synagogue in Chicago, and the Chorale Mystiques under Matthew Lazar. The music was a kind of musical history of the Jewish people from the time of Solomon to the present.
Mizrahi has become known as the “Jewish Pavarotti,” but to label him a tenor does not begin to describe his voice. He hits ear-stinging high B-Flats and C’s, but sounds at least equally comfortable as a bass-baritone, and in either range he conveys power and fervor as few other singers do.
Power is the key word for this concert. The Hebrew verses, biblical or traditional, that have survived for hundreds or thousands of years certainly have it. And the music, for the most part, suits them. To western ears the ancient chants have an untamed, primitive sound that somehow also sounds modern.
The qualities were plain in the opening choral chant, “Ozi V’zimrat Yah,” the song of Moses and Israelites after crossing the Red Sea. A strong, pulsing march became a kind of canon, a series of voices following each other. But these voices followed so fast–like eager troops scrambling for shore–that they piled up, producing a brilliant, very 20th Century swirl of tones.
Mizrahi appeared in “B’tzeyt Yisrael” and dominated the evening from then on. (Surprisingly, this setting of Psalm 114 is partly in Hebrew, partly Latin, an example of the Middle Ages’ cross-cultural swapping.) Here the compressed-canon style gave the effect of blurring, multiple echoes of Mizrahi’s soaring voice.
The women of the choir made a soft, shining texture of a passage in “Shir Hashirim,” the Song of Songs.
For most of the concert, men and women sang separately, reflecting traditional practice in the synagogue. They did join in two 20th Century works, “Me’al Pisgat” (“From the Peak of Mt. Scopus”) and “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav” (Jerusalem the Golden.) These are love songs to Jerusalem, sumptuously arranged and beautifully sung.
A striking feature of this music is the way it half reflects, half absorbs different cultures and ethnic strains–Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Yemenite. In the Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) tradition was “Respondenos” (Answer us!), with its wavering, flamenco-like vocal line. Here Mizrahi surpassed his own astonishing vocal range. Singing falsetto, he makes a very worthy soprano. An amazing soloist plus a multifaceted choir that thoroughly knows its business equaled a standout concert.
